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Have any of you used any of the management software for homeschooling… like www.homeschooltracker.com or www.homeschoolreporting.com ? If so, what program do you like and why?

We are new to homeschooling this year, and I am being a bit anal about keeping track of everything. I am not sure what our future will bring, so I want to be able to account for everything we are doing in a professional manner in case we ever re-enter a brick and mortar situation. Or, if we decide to homeschool all the way through I want to be able to build transcripts that a college would find interesting and impressive.

We do not need to account to our state or school district for any of this, so it is more of a personal quest in case it will come in handy down the road.

Hi Labmom, welcome to homeschooling!

I don't want to be the annoying person who tries to talk you out of what's right for you, but maybe consider getting a feel for homeschooling before getting serious about record-keeping? One of the joys of homeschooling is that it really becomes about LEARNING, rather than tagging bases. It's an amazing experience, like going from 2 dimensions to 3 dimensions. I wonder if a focus on record-keeping would interfere with that.

My DD is just 7, so I have a bit more luxury to just let the learning flow. The older they get, and the closer to high school and college prep, the more documentation matters.

I tried Homeschool Tracker twice. The first time was many years ago before they had the online version and the second time was with the online version. I couldn't stand it (twice). They seem to make simple things extraordinarily complicated. I've also tried other homeschool schedulers in passing, and they all had issues that made me cranky.

Over the years, I've developed a system where I use Excel to create lists of the things I want to get done. Then each week I use the lists to make a plan in pencil (so I can change things easily). This system seems to give me the best of both worlds--a planning piece that ensures I can get everything done during the year (at least in theory!) as well as the flexibility to change things week to week (the weekly plan) as well as day to day (by erasing what I've written in pencil).

I then keep the weekly schedules as a primary record of what we've done.

In grades K-8, I would write an annual report, which was a narrative about how the year went in each subject followed by a listing of all resources used. I can't tell you how many times I've referred to these reports over the years.

For high school courses, I keep a yearly gradebook in Excel, with one worksheet per course. I list the assignments and the grades and the weighting. At the end of the year, I calculate the grade for each course and print out the gradebook and keep it, along with course descriptions and the weekly schedules in a binder.

I arrange my transcripts by subject for college applications. The transcript includes what you think of as a transcript followed by course descriptions (a few sentences about what was done and then a listing of materials used).

For reference, I've just finished my 12th year of homeschooling. My older son graduated from our homeschool in 2014 and was accepted at his first choice school (as well as all the other schools he applied to, except for one where he was waitlisted). My younger son started high school coursework this past year.

Thanks for the feedback ladies. DD is 12 and technically in 7th, but we do not have to declare a grade level when we homeschool in our state. It is possible I may grade skip her if we ever go back into a formal school situation, thus my fixation on record keeping ;-) Some of what she will be doing this year could potentially count for high school credit, so I am planning ahead...just in case! I wish I could relax, but it's not really in my nature ;-)

I've been homeschooling for 7 years. In the past (elementary and middle school), I used a simple calendar to jot down what we did each day. Since we're moving into high school this year, I'm transitioning to on-line record keeping. I just installed homeschoolminder. So far I've plugged in students, classes, and grading weights. It seems to be pretty easy and intuitive. I have experienced one problem (duplicate entries), but have sent a help request. It was $39.00 for the year.

I wrote a post before but I guess it got eaten by the Internet.

I bought a copy of homeschool tracker maybe six years ago. I ended up slowly transistioning my son back into public school that year so I didn't end up using it.

Before I bought it, I used spread sheets to make charts and schedules because we were constantly adjusting it as things changed and it was easy to modify the file. I kept the weekly plans i printed out in a binder and just checked off what we did and moved what we didn't get to to the next week. Our law says we have to keep a lesson plan/reading/book log as we go. None of my plans were very detailed.

Adding a link to the thread called Afterschooling, which discusses pros/cons and uses of documentation of a child's work outside the classroom.